ballad, he defeated the sitting Member, Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall, and represented the Dumfries Burghs till 1796.

Robert Riddell, Esq. of Glenriddell, at whose residence of Friars' Carse the celebrated "Whistle" contest took place on October 16th, 1789. He was an eminent antiquary, and wrote much upon the archæology of the South of Scotland. He died 21st April, 1794.

Mr John Rigg of Crawick Forge was one of Burns's earliest and most intimate acquaintances in Upper Nithsdale, and when the Poet entered upon the farm of Ellisland he supplied him with a stock of farming implements. Mr Rigg was wont to relate how he and the Bard came to know each other. It came about in this fashion. He was the owner of a copy of Burns's Poems, and one day, after dinner, he was deeply absorbed in the book and failed to notice the entrance of a stranger, who remained perfectly still, for he knew the book, and marked the evident gratification it afforded the reader. The stranger was Robert Burns. He asked of Rigg what was the nature of the book that seemed to take such a deep hold upon him. Rigg, after an apology for keeping a stranger waiting, replied that he had been reading the "Poems of a fellow called Burns. They're very clever," he added, "and if I had the man here who wrote them I would like to shake him by the hand and stand him a good drink." Burns made himself known, and a lasting friendship was the result. John Rigg was a member of Sanquhar Town Council 1796-98, and for many years took an active part in the affairs of the Incorporated Trades, being convener 1797-98, and returned Deacon of the Hammermen at nineteen of the annual elections. He died 1st April, 1833, in the 83rd year of his age.

The remaining names on the list will be more or less known to those familiar with the life of the Poet; but, as having a more close connection with Sanquhar burgh, I may add that "David Blair, Esq., late Provost of Dumfries," was a member of the Town Council from September 30, 1793, to September 29, 1794, and that Mr Crawford Tait was on the Council for the twelve months from Michaelmas, 1801, till Michaelmas, 1802.

John Whigham, the eldest son of Provost Edward Whigham, was the last survivor of Sanquhar burgesses who were acquainted with Burns. He remembered the Poet well, and my father has told me that John would recount with pride how, when a boy, he had received a present of an orange from Burns. He died 19th September, 1857.

TOM WILSON.

BURNS INTERPRETED IN THE LIGHT

D

OF HIS OWN TIMES.

ISCUSSING the Works of Burns some time ago with a gentleman, whom I supposed to be fairly intelligent, I quoted the two following lines from "A Man's a Man for a' that" :

"The rank is but the guinea's stamp,

The man's the gowd for a' that "

He had

of times, He was

and, without thinking much about the question, asked him if he knew what they meant? To my surprise he did not. often read the lines, and heard them quoted hundreds and he thought that he understood their meaning. ignorant of his ignorance until my question was accidentally put to him. I had to tell him that the guinea was a gold coin, worth 21/-, current in the days of Burns, who had taken his illustration of the worth of man, compared with his rank, from the process of minting. What Burns meant was, that as the value of a guinea was the gold of which it was composed, and not merely the superscription giving its value which was stamped upon it, so it was by the possession of the essential qualities of manhood, and not by social position, that the worth of a man was to be estimated.

There must be few people so ill-informed in this particular respect as the gentleman to whom I have referred, but at the same time there must be a vast number of others, not at all ignorant of Burns, who do not understand many lines and verses in his Works, because of a lack of eighteenth century knowledge. For example, Burns claimed to possess the spirit of independence, and he voiced that claim both in verse and prose; but how can this attitude be reconciled, on a first reading at any rate, with what he says in his "Epistle to Davie "?

"The last o't, the warst o't,

Is only but to beg."

This, by the way, was not the only time that Burns expressed himself in this fashion. There is the couplet in the "Dedication" of his Poems to Gavin Hamilton :—

"And when I downa yoke a naig,

Then, Lord be thankit, I can beg."

In the context of the lines first quoted we are faced with a seeming contradiction, a declaration of independence combined with a willingness to descend without protest to what we regard as one of the meanest of occupations, viz., that of a beggar. If that is our reading of the lines perhaps we are wrong; and it may be found on a closer acquaintance with their meaning that there was nothing inconsistent in this attitude of Burns. If we know how beggars were regarded in the eighteenth century we will not marvel at the declaration of the Poet.

Readers of The Antiquary may remember what Sir Walter Scott had to say about beggars of bygone generations, and as his words express what I want to be at, they may be quoted here. "The old-remembered beggar, even in my own time, like the baccoch, or travelling cripple of Ireland, was," says Scott, "expected to merit his quarters by something beyond an exposition. of his distresses. He was often a talkative, facetious fellow, prompt at repartee, and not withheld from exercising his power that way by any respect of persons, his patched cloak giving him the privilege of the ancient jester. To be a guid cracker—that is, to possess talents for conversation— -was essential to the trade of a 'puir body' of the more esteemed class; and Burns, who delighted in the amusement their discourses afforded, seems to have looked forward with gloomy firmness to the possibility of himself becoming one day or other a member of their itinerant society. . . . As the life of a Scottish mendicant of the eighteenth century," adds Scott, "seems to have been contemplated without much horror by Robert Burns, the author can hardly have erred in giving to Edie Ochiltree' something of poetical character and personal dignity above the more abject of his miserable calling." These words of Scott give us a different idea of the mind of Burns. We see now that if he had become so far reduced as to

need to beg he would have been able to give full value from his stores of wit and knowledge for the alms he received, so that it would be as much worth the while of the people to assist him as it would be for him to ask their help. In short, to the last Burns would be independent. The necessity of Burns being interpreted is thus apparent, and this necessity will become all the greater the further we are removed from the period in which he lived. It is with a view to elucidating some of the passages in Burns for the benefit of those who are unacquainted with things as they were in the eighteenth century that the following notes, which do not quite exhaust the subject, have been prepared.

Burns was a son of the soil, and it is appropriate that we should begin with those things with which he was earliest acquainted, and with which during the greater part of his life he was closely associated. There is a good deal about agriculture in the poems of Burns, which can only be understood by a knowledge of the conditions of that industry in the eighteenth century. Those conditions were vastly different, of course, from what they are to-day, agriculture having shared in the progress which has taken place in all our industries within the past century and a quarter. If it were possible for Burns to return to Scotland to-day he would see little connection between the system in vogue now, and the methods which he and his fellow-farmers followed. He would be unable to see the relationship between a band of shearers, with their sickles, slowly but cheerfully working in the corn-field, and the American self-binder, which mows down more grain in an hour than a band of shearers would do in a day, and reduces the employees to a few men-one who drives the horses and attends to the reaper, and another one or two who put the bound sheaves into stooks. But let us deal first with the plough. The old Scots plough was a very clumsy implement, and under no possible circumstances could be drawn by two horses, like the ploughs of to-day. It was constructed of wood, with the exception of the coulter and share, which were the only iron parts, whereas the plough of to-day is entirely made of iron unless—